personally. he has not come on the show since he wouldn't answer my questions years ago about the civil rights act. but he may finally feel pressured to answer questions from his hometown press. this may yet be a growth experience for the young freshman senator. we shall see and we hope so. good evening from new york. i'm chris hayes. behind in the polls, desperate to turn things around, the republican candidate for governor of virginia, ten cuccinelli, the cucc, was on the trail today ripping obama care, convinced, it seems, that this will be the issue that can catapult him to an improbable victory tomorrow. probably not going to happen, but bashing obama care is good politics if you're a republican right now. and it certainly helps when so much of the media is serving up incomplete reports about the affordable care act.

is the flurry of coverage about obama care confusing you? well, we here at "all in" can help. here's our "viewer's guide to watching obama care coverage." when you see a report about someone being dropped from their insurance and not able to afford a replacement policy -- >> you've got millions of people being kicked off their plan. >> katherine says she found a plan on the health insurance marketplace that would cost them $178 a month, which she still considers a stretch for their budget. >> the question you should be asking is, does the person in this report qualify for subsidies on the newly created health exchange? someone like deborah cavalaro. >> i'd be paying more for the exchange plans that i am currently paying by a wide margin. >> the report did not mention that deborah qualifies for a hefty federal premium subsidy as reported later by the "l.a. times." if you are watching a report

that doesn't say whether or not the subject qualifies for subsidies, the story is incomplete. next, when you watch a report about someone losing insurance they liked -- >> for tens of thousands are being notified their insurance plan is being canceled. >> that includes 56-year-old diane barrett. last month, she received a letter from blue cross/blue shield informing her that as of january 2014, she would lose her current plan. she pays $54 a month. the new plan she's being offered would run $591 a month. >> these are people that love their plan, they want to keep their plan, and they're not able to get a plan. >> you should be asking yourself, just what kind of policy is this? does it cover the things you would want insurance to cover? does it cover hospitalization or doctors' visits or prescriptions, or is the insurance being dropped insurance in name only, also known as a junk policy?

if the report doesn't say, you're not getting the whole story. next, and this is important, you will see story after story featuring a letter from an insurance company bearing bad news. >> letters in the mail alerting people they or their doctors are being dropped by their insurance company. >> individual policy-holders getting letters from their insurance companies. >> letters are hitting mailboxes. >> this is the letter florida blue customers are receiving in the mail that's basically telling them, due to the affordable care act, their health plans will be canceled. >> while watching these reports, you should be asking, is the reporter taking the insurance company at face value? today, dylan scott at talking points memo reports that "across the country, insurance companies have sent misleading letters to consumers, trying to lock them into the company's own, sometimes more expensive, health insurance." tpm has confirmed two specific examples where companies contacted their customers and pushed them to renew their health coverage at a higher price than they would pay through the marketplace.

and finally, when you watch these individual stories, remember, there are over a million people in texas alone who are not getting insurance under obama care because republicans in texas blocked the medicaid expansion. there are over 700,000 people in florida, over 400,000 people in georgia who will not get coverage because they live in a state that blocked the medicaid expansion. have you heard their stories? do you know their name? just because they didn't get a letter doesn't mean they aren't getting screwed. joining me now is dylan scott who reported that great piece for "talking points memo" and nancy metcalf, senior editor at "consumer reports," where she covers health care reform. dylan, i'll start with you. great piece of reporting, and one of the things i found amazing is the way in which the letter from the insurance company announcing the cancellation of coverage is designed to essentially very quickly and slyly roll someone over into a much more expensive plan without actually communicating what their options are. >> exactly. i mean, there are two problems

here as far as consumer advocates and state regulators are concerned, and that is, the letters from insurers are leaving out two critical pieces of information. one, that people have the option to go to the marketplace and shop for insurance, both from these insurers and from other insurers. and two, that if they take these kind of default options that these insurers are presenting in the letters, they're not going to be able to take advantage of the financial assistance that obama care has to offer. so, for example, the woman that we reported on today in washington, the difference between what her insurer tried to funnel her into and what she was able to find on the marketplace was the difference between night and day. outside of the marketplace, her company would have put her in a plan that costs more than $1,000 a month, had a more than $6,000 deductible. but inside the exchange, she was able to find a plan with a $250 deductible that cost her $80 a month after the obama care's financial assistance was applied. >> wait a second, you are saying

that her current insurer sent her a letter and said, well, we're canceling your current plan, but comparable plan, 1,000 bucks a month. when she actually goes to the exchange, shops around, she finds something that when all in after the subsidies, she's paying $80 as opposed to $1,000 a month? >> exactly. and i think what is riling up consumer advocates and state regulators is that the plan that she got from her insurer said if you like this plan, which is the most comparable plan, we can offer you under obama care compared to what you had before, just do nothing. don't worry about it. you'll be covered. >> yeah, that's like the old record of the month club move, right? it's like, don't do anything. we'll just bill you. do not worry about it. nancy, is this an isolated incident or are you seeing this from your perch at "consumer reports" as a kind of widespread practice right now? >> i've seen -- i was looking at a bunch of letters today, and they're all pretty much as dylan describes. hey, we have to cancel your

plan. obama care made us do it. we're going to give you a better plan. it's going to be really expensive, but you don't have to do anything. and somewhere way down in the letter, it will say, oh, by the way, you can go on your marketplace. i saw a letter today from missouri. it didn't even bother telling anybody where to find the market place. and i think it just -- the way that people are reacting to this really brings home the point that a lot of people who will benefit from this law still don't know it, and we need to do a much better job of educating them. >> do you think -- is there any way to cash this out a little bit? i guess the question, is how will these practices change, nancy? is it just a question of these insurers being called out on this? are they cynically using the excuse of obama care in the letter to deflect blame so that they can kind of get away with what used to be called panic selling folks?

>> well, i think two things are going on. one, they really do have to get rid of these plans because they're no longer going to be allowed to be sold or renewed after the beginning of the year, but i think the other thing is, they want to keep these people as customers. >> right. >> one of the big deals for insurance companies is market share. and now that a lot more people are going to be able to get insurance, they're nervous because they want to keep as many healthy people in these plans as they can. and remember, most of the people who are being canceled are healthy or they wouldn't have the insurance at all. they're really trying to keep hold of them as customers. >> dylan, you talked to some state insurance regulators who are starting to raise some red flags about this. what did you hear from them? >> well, it sort of depends on the state, for starters. in the case of kentucky, the commissioner was able to levy a $65,000 fine. the company had to send out a new letter, and anybody who had

committed to the misleading letter was free to shop for insurance under obama care. but, like, out in washington, technically, the insurer was following the letter of the law, so the best that the insurance commissioner could do was put out a consumer alert and try to inform people that they have other options. but in some cases, their hands are tied. in some places, they are able to take some disciplinary action, so it depends. >> what's striking to me about the reporting in your piece is the woman who's the subject of that, who receives the letter in washington, donna, strikes me as quite self-possessed and quite educated, and she essentially has to do all this due diligence to go out and realize she's having the wool pulled over her eyes. but you can imagine thousands and hundreds of thousands of people who are in similar circumstances not being necessarily equipped to do that. dylan scott from "talking points memo," nancy metcalf from "consumer reports." thank you so much. david axelrod, former senior adviser with president barack obama, now an nbc news analyst and director of the chicago institute of politics. david, what is your feeling

about this, the coverage that the health care law has gotten in the last few weeks? >> well, look, some of it is self-inflicted because the website hasn't functioned properly. and you know, part of the problem here is that people haven't been able to go on to the website and learn that they could get a better deal. on the other hand, many of these people aren't even being informed in these letters that they have that opportunity or that it's buried in the fine print, and that, you know, that's unacceptable. that's deceptive. and i do think that, you know, there is -- you know, chris, you're an experienced journalist -- there tends to be kind of a herd mentality in coverage. >> yep. >> and now the story is, well, the website's not working, now the letters are out there. and i have no doubt that the opponents are fanning this. i don't think this is all original reporting going on, but i don't think people are digging deep enough. i think the piece you did at the front end was a service in terms

of demystifying some of this, but it is problematical. and you know, my strong feeling is that they need to get this website up and running and they need to remarket the whole program so that people will go on. and what they'll find is a very competitive marketplace, good subsidies. and let's remember, these insurers we're talking about here and the market we're talking about here, this small market, individual market, and the people who are being impacted by this are people who have poor insurance policies. >> right. >> and you know, i said -- i've been saying throughout this period that i have a very personal perspective on this, because when i was a young person, i got insurance that i thought was adequate. i had a child when i was 26 years old. when she was 7 months old, she started having seizures, epilepsy, and my coverage had no prescription coverage, and her medications to keep her alive --

she had uncontrolled seizures -- $1,000 a month. we couldn't shift her to another insurance policy because she had a pre-existing condition. >> right. >> and i thought i had great insurance, and it was great as long as we were all healthy. >> so, i'm glad you raise that, because it seems to me when we're talking about, there's the first wave of coverage, which is about the website, and i think basically, the website was not working, and that was the problem there. the second wave of coverage is deeper and it's more about this, the cancellation letters. and to me it strikes me, there's two issues here. there's the issue on the merits, which is, there are changes happening to this market that was a very broken market for some of the reasons you're saying, testifying to personally, right? very broken market. i also participated in this very broken market at times in my life. those changes on the policy merits are different than the other critique you're hearing from conservatives, and like you hear from mitt romney this weekend, that it's fundamentally that the president misled or lied to the american people. i want you to take a listen to what mitt romney had to say this weekend. >> perhaps the most important lesson the president i think

failed to learn was, you have to tell the american people the truth. and when he told the american people that you could keep your health insurance if you wanted to keep that plan, period. he said that time and again. >> right. >> he wasn't telling the truth. >> but governor on that point -- >> i think that fundamental dishonesty has really put in peril the whole foundation of his second term. >> fundamental dishonesty. what's your thought on that? >> first of all, i regret that governor romney felt a need to engage in that way. the campaign's a year old. get over it. the fact of the matter is, the president went out and he said i think what he believed to be the fact and what was substantially was the fact, because 95%, 96%, whatever it was, 97% of americans are in the position where they can keep the insurance they have and they're going to see no changes. there is this small group of people who weren't grandfathered in because they got insurance after the law was signed in the individual market who bought substandard policies that don't

protect them, and by the way, don't protect us, because when their coverage isn't adequate, we end up footing the bill as taxpayers, and so, you know, there is this small group there that has to be dealt with. many of them will get better insurance for less money. >> right. the issue that strikes me is the phrasing here, and the president used this phrase a lot, and it was a powerful phrase politically, which was you. it was addressing the listener. you can keep your plan, you can keep your doctor. and there's always going to be someone on the other side of that you, sitting on the other side of the television screen for whom that is not true. nbc news analyst david axelrod, thank you so much. >> good to be with you. coming up -- >> a more important reason to support this legislation and popular support, it's the right thing to do. all americans, regardless of what they look like where they live or who they choose to love deserve to be treated with the same respect and dignity while they earn a living. >> a recent study found that eight out of ten voters thought

lbgt people were already protected from work sdmimsion by law. that is not true and the republican house wants to keep it that way.

fortunately for senator rand paul when you type his name into google, plus the letters "p" and "l," this is what comes up for now, but i bet it won't be that way for long. more on the senator's plagiarism problem, ahead.

the ayes are 61, the nays are 30. three-fifths of the senate duly

chosen and sworn, having voted in the affirmative, the motion is agreed to. >> today was a historic day in the united states senate, where 61 senators, more than enough to break a filibuster, voted to advance the employment non discrimination act or nda, legislation that would make it illegal for employers with at least 15 workers to discriminate based on sexual orientation and gender identity. right now, in 29 states in this country, your boss can in many cases fire you simply because he does not like the fact that you are gay. that's in 2013, and that is insane. democrats and a handful of republicans have been pushing to change this, and the senate is now poised to pass nda for the first time ever and throw its support behind the notion that it should be illegal to discriminate in the workplace based on sexuality just as it is illegal to discriminate based on race, religion, gender, age and disability. but on the same day the senate moved toward greater equality for lgbt americans, a spokesman announced that house speaker john boehner would not support the law and signaled boehner

will not bring it up on the house floor for a vote. now, republicans are smart enough to realize they can't just come out and say they favor discrimination against gay people in the workplace, but it wasn't that long ago they would say just that. the new tactic is to argue that nda will "increase frivolous litigation and cost american jobs." we asked boehner's spokesman if that means the speaker wants to roll back civil rights protections for other groups that can now sue over discrimination. he said no. apparently, frivolous lawsuits are only a concern when it comes to gay people. in march, the national republican committee under reince priebus said if they want to win the election "we must change our tone, especially on certain social issues that are turning off young voters." it would be hard to find a republican strategist who would disagree, saying the gop should be the party of intolerance against bay people, but particularly house republicans can't stop taking stances that alienate large swaths of the population, they did it on immigration, on the shutdown and now again. they can't help themselves. michael steele, msnbc

contributor and former chairman of the rnc. if you got in a room with six or ten strategists who are trying to plot a political path forward for the gop post 2012, i think there's three things that you wouldn't want to -- it's not the hill you'd want to die on. >> right. >> if you're the republican party. the shutdown, which was disastrous. >> absolutely. right. >> i think you don't want to be seen as the party that kills comprehensive immigration reform. >> true. >> and i think you don't want to be the party that's seen as sticking up, as we see today, sticking up for essentially the right to discriminate against gay people in the workplace. and yet, we see the senate passing all three of those things, right? clean cr, comprehensive immigration reform, and today it comes out of the senate, breaking the filibuster. the house, though, we just got nothing. >> i will give you two of those hills, not the third. i think in terms of the first two, absolutely, because -- >> you're saying the shutdown and immigration. >> the shutdown and immigration. i think that the political ramifications of that are long term, particularly when you see

for hispanics, for example, you know, 50,000 hispanics turn 15 every month. that's a big number after a while. i think on this other hill, this third hill on nda and its progeny, and it will be, i think, other federal legislation as well as state legislation in this regard. the party tends to look at that as something that it's more socially oriented, it's going to be more community-based, and therefore, there's no need for this broad swath of federal regulation or legislation. >> but doesn't it -- >> which is inconsistent when you look at our history in terms of civil rights legislation that we promoted from the 13th, 14th amendment, et cetera. >> so, i'm a little confused. do you yourself, michael steele, favor nda? >> i would vote for it, yes. >> you would vote for it. >> i would support it, yeah. >> but you think they're not going to see political backlash for killing it. >> right. >> see, i disagree for the following reason. i agree it won't be the same as the backlash they faced for immigration reform, but i think there is a deep branding problem around tolerance, around openness, around the

accessiblity and cultural infinity, particularly generationally. that was the reince priebus line coming out of the big postmortem in 2012, and i think -- >> so, you think there will be a youth push in a sense. >> there is a case to be made, if you go to your median voter at age 30 or 35 and say, you know, the government right now, you can be fired for being gay, and do you think that's a good idea? overwhelmingly, they're going to say no. >> first off, you've got to get that message to that medium voter. >> yes. >> and so, who's going to deliver that message? how does it get delivered through the system? and keep in mind -- >> i'll tell you -- >> well, keep in mind, chris, that you're talking about members of the house who are dealing with a much smaller subset of the voting population in which nine out of ten heads would nod in agreement with them in not pursuing an nda agenda. >> well done. well done. and in fact, what do we have, nda's game? i actually was going to say we've avoided any enda puns, but actually, we haven't. the thing i would say is, you know, that first question of

who's going to message this. i mean, this was the thing that the obama campaign did well, masterfully in 2008 and again in 2012, essentially stitching together this ascending coalition. and these steps to me, and i agree, this is not a make-or-break issue for the gop in the long run like comprehensive immigration reform, probably not, but it speaks to the deep inability of the republican caucus, the governing institution of the republican party right now, because they own part of the government, their inability to make strategic decisions en masse that can respond to precisely the branding problems the party has. >> ah. and that's where i think the rub will ultimately wind up. maybe not right now, but when you get into 2014, i think individual members are going to revisit this issue in their own way. i think that, certainly, by the time we get to the presidential, this issue will have a broader platform and more voices attendant to it. so, i think this is going to be more incremental than just coming out of the box.

>> that to me is the question, right? the 2016 republican presidential nominee, do they come out in favor of nda? >> yeah. that's a really good question. >> msnbc contributor michael steele, thanks so much. >> thank you. good to see you, man. all right. all right, coming up -- >> eight months ago, i applied for the job of governor of virginia. tonight you have hired me. thank you. and i am so glad to be going to work with someone that every governor needs. that's a good lawyer. thank you for attorney general ken cuccinello. >> what a difference four years makes. we'll preview this year's governors' race in virginia where it's not looking so good for right-wing darling ken cuccinelli. stay with us.

here is what wikipedia says about plagiarism. "plagiarism is the wrongful appropriation and purloining and publication of another author's language, thoughts, ideas or expressions and representation of them as one's own original work." you will notice i cited wikipedia as i read from it, and you know why? because i'm not a plagiarist. i communicate to people for a living association it's pretty damn essential that people know when the words i'm saying are mine and when i'm quoting someone else. something i'm noticing in the series of plagiarism scandals that tend to pop up from time to time in american pop culture is it's hard to find examples of people who just plagiarize once, because you either are a person who cares about citing correctly and giving credit where credit

is due, or you're not. remember former "the new york times" journalist david blair, accused of deception and just making things up, snowballed into one of the biggest scandals in the paper's his. it didn't take long for people to pull the thread on jason blair's work, as one "the new york times" reporter was quoted "there has never been a systemic effort to lie and cheat as a reporter comparable to what jayson blair seems to have done." >> i think once you realize you can get away with something, once you cross over that line, you somehow have to rationalize how i'm a good person and i did this, so somehow, this has got to be okay. i've got to make this okay. so, then it becomes a lot easier to do it. >> republican senator rand paul of kentucky now has a jayson blair problem, as my colleague, rachel maddow, first pointed out last week. >> from wikipedia, ethan hawke's character "assumes the character who had been iron jurd in a car

accident, leaving him paralyzed. hit it, senator. >> he assumes the identity of jerome eugene morrow, swimming star second to none, but he's been paralyzed in a car accident. >> then buzzfeed pointed on out that senator paul lifted another parts of wikipedia verb tum, this time from "stand and deliver." >> buzzfeed says you borrowed several lines from wikipedia for a speech in -- >> i think once again -- >> this case, the movie "stand and deliver." >> and once again, it's a disagreement on how you footnote things. and i think people footnote things different in an academic paper than they do in a public speech. >> oh, you didn't see me footnoting with my hand as i made my speech? perhaps even more damning is this latest revelation that paul's book "government bullies," copied more than 1,300 words from a 2003 heritage foundation study. and now words that they are removing speeches from paul's website.

if the internet makes it easier to plagiarize it also makes it easier to get caught. michael waldman is a former director of speechwriter and assistant to bill clinton, author of "my fellow americans," famous speeches from george washington to barack obama. all right, michael, let's just say, authorship in a speech is a complicated thing. >> that's right. speeches really are a little bit different from an academic paper or anything else written down. it's an oral tradition, and the martin luther king's great paration at the lincoln memorial borrowed lines from different speakers. >> right. >> but having said that, going to wikipedia and lifting things in full paragraph form probably takes it to a different level. >> well, in your day, you didn't have wikipedia, so you had to go to the britannica, right and sort of copy word for word. i mean, did you do this as a speech writer? >> well, no. well, first of all, with bill clinton, he didn't really read the speeches. >> right. >> so, even if somebody had plagiarized, and there were

always -- when you have a deluge of facts coming in and information, you know, there can be slip-ups. we now know how rand paul's speechwriter wrote his term papers in college, right? control -- >> well, multiple speech writers. i think that's part of what's weird here. >> when i was working for president clinton, and it was a different era before there was such a ubiquitous internet, but also it was harder to get caught. we at one point had a line from "the communist manifesto" accidentally went into the 1996 state of the union address -- >> there is a specter haunting america! >> all in solid melts into air, which is the same speech where he claimed the end of the era of big government. [ laughter ] >> the era of big government is over, semi-colon, all that is solid melts into the air. >> i would have been the first speech writer deported in american history, but you know, that kind of thing happens, but you really do want to be careful, because the words that a political leader says are not just vapor, they're policy, they're politics, they're

supposed to be taken seriously. and the thing that is troubling here is the kind of slap dash nature of all of this, especially with the book. >> there's two things that i find. it's, "a," the slap dash nature, particularly the book. that's just sloppiness or i don't even know what the motivation is, but also the reaction. i mean, the reaction, this is him reacting to jorge ramos in that interview, gives you a taste of the high dungeon we're seeing from rand paul. take a listen. >> do you write your own speeches, senator, or is someone else helping you with that? >> a lot of people participate in writing the speeches, so they're not really attributable to one person, but the thing is, is that if you look at any of my speeches, there's never been any indication that i'm trying to take credit for someone else's work. so, really, this is really about information and attacks coming from haters. >> attacks from haters. there is him challenging, it seemed, amounted to a duel this weekend, which my bet is rachel will have something to say about

that later this evening, but the reaction is unhinged. >> well, the level of insecurity that comes through in the way he's reacting to this should really give pause. there's almost, you know, sometimes people talk about the imposter syndrome, and it's like he's got a little bit of a cold sweat breaking out here. you know, i really think that if politicians just get handed a speech and they read it, even somebody with as distinct an ideological makeup as rand paul, there's something wrong with that. i mean, i really want the people to at least play a major role in writing their own speeches. they can't do it all, but this comes from -- >> it makes you think what kind of operation is being run here. finally, this, joe biden famously, you know, was essentially knocked out of a presidential primary in 1988 for delivering a speech that was actually delivered by a british politician. it was about sort of a boyhood story, uncredited. the dukakis campaign circulated a video of him doing it uncredited.

should rand paul go in a time machine back to 1988 and like apologize to joe biden? you know, is that -- what are the rules here? what's a misdemeanor, what's a felony? >> look, i do think that some of the rules are in flux because there is greater ability to look at videotapes, there's greater ability to cut and paste. biden got in trouble in particular because it was a first person story about his coal miner ancestors and neil kinnick's coal miner ancestors, too. i think if i were rand paul, i would just say, yeah, this has been sloppy and i would make darn sure not to have it happen again. his reaction of threatening a duel and the haters -- >> as if his honor has been questioned when he has been caught red-handed. that strikes me as bizarre. >> well, plus, he is seen even by democrats as something of a fresh face. >> right. >> with a not so orthodox, heterodox mix of libertarian, drug legalization and foreign policy. but i think part of the freshness is data that he's not just the product of a committee.

>> right, or just, you know, stealing think tank papers and putting them in his book. former speech writer michael waldman. thank you. >> my pleasure. >> we'll be right back.

coming up, there's a lot to look forward to tomorrow night, results from three big races that will say a lot about the wretched state of the republican party. we will preview them ahead. first, the three awesomest things on the internet today, beginning with 26.2 miles of triumph. congratulations to everyone who ran in the new york city marathon, which returned after being canceled last year due to hurricane sandy. and spectators showed their creativity and encouragement with signs, signs cheering on random strangers, there was "no time for walk-in," a classic, one promising an extra boost of power to across the finish line, and of course, no new york event is complete without a healthy dose of sarcasm. but it wasn't only spectators having fun. as "new york" magazine pointed out, plenty of runners were still in the halloween spirit. here's a banana costume, another is elmo, captain america

crossing the finish line and one is wearing the costume of "all in" producer cary fox. wait a minute, that is cary fox, who finished in 4:01 and out-paced banana guy, captain america and elmo. that steady, steady performance from mr. fox is almost certainly the result of seeing this ins operational sign along the sidelines. congrats, cary. the second awesomest thing on the internet today, a power surge north of the border. this mysterious video was taken from inside a house in quebec, canada. what is lurking around the bend? the clover field monster? the northern lights? nobody, this. [ bleep ] >> oh, my god.

oh, my god. that is not cool. >> we beg to differ. that was way cool! the website io9 says the fireball was a result of a high-impotence electrical arcing fault. sure. we just know it's so cool to look at, we can disregard the fact that the camera is held vertically. stop that, everyone, seriously! thirdly, everyone's a critic. jeff bezos is the subject of "jeff bezos and the age of amazon," and you'll find a one-star review by mckenzie bezos, slamming the book. the "wall street journal" confirmed this harsh critic was, indeed, jeff bezos's wife, mckenzie, meaning it joins ours list of the favorite reviews ever, including this one for a so-called ufo detector. one star is too much for this product. i don't know if this was a scam or isn't working.

i'm still getting abducted on a regular basis. and then "how to avoid huge ships." i bought it as a companion to captain trimmer's other excellent titles, "how to avoid a train" and "how to avoid the empire state building." after reading them, i haven't been hit by anything bigger tan a diesel bus. there are republican my mantra? family first. but with less energy, moodiness, and a low sex drive, i saw my doctor. a blood test showed it was low testosterone, not age. we talked about axiron.

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there are republican candidates on the ballot in three big races tomorrow in three quite different elect rates, but their fates say a lot about the political moment. in virginia, the attorney general, ken cuccinelli, the pro transvaginal ultrasound tea party candidate, is limping his way towards an embarrassing defeat in a state that is reliably republican at the state house level, where the current governor, bob mcdonnell, won handily three years ago. in new york city, which hasn't elected a democrat in 20 years, republican candidate jim loada is about to get trounced most likely with loyalists referring to 1950 charges of communism against bill de blasio. and in new jersey, governor chris christie is a study in contrast, particularly compared to ken cuccinelli. christie appears to be waltzing into an easy re-election, having successfully mastered the atmospherics, if not the substance, of going after the tea party strain of his own party. here's christie's sermon to his own faithful yesterday.

>> folks don't care if you agree with them on everything, because let me tell you, if you're looking for the candidate you agree with 100% of the time, then i want you to do something for me tonight, go home and look in the mirror. you're the only person you agree with 100% of the time. but sometimes we make political candidates feel like that's what you want, like you want us to agree with you 100% of the time or you won't vote for us. that's why we have the political system we have in washington now, because we have people who have become convinced that they have to be 100 percenters. >> joining me now, msnbc contributor goldie taylor, josh barrel, politics editor at business insider and richard kim, executive editor at thenation.com. josh, you wrote about that speech and i thought it was a fascinating study in contrast. david wilde did a great piece about the last days of the ken cuccinelli campaign and a little color in his report was that the person before cuccinelli updated the crowd on the latest benghazi stuff, and that's like the perfect difference.

here's that christie sermon to his own faithful i thought was an interesting moment. >> and that speech was in toms river, new jersey, which is, if you can call anything a republican stronghold in new jersey, that's it. christie won that county 2-1 in 2009, and he's going there and telling these people, look, we have to compromise with democrats. when i spoke to people in the crowd at that rally, they agreed with that. they repeatedly said that the things he liked about christie was his record of bipartisan achievement. and i think the the national level, people tend to look at this, especially people from the left, and say this is just spin and really he's another republican like everybody else. >> yes, correct, go on. >> but in new jersey, you've had politics for four years with a lot of achievements between christie and the democrat-controlled legislature. they did a reform of public employee pensions and benefits, a bipartisan reform, four budgets in a fairly non acrimoniousway, including the last time. the democratic candidate was up set that democrats in the legislature -- >> everything you're saying is why the current tea party

domination of washington creates a counternarrative about bipartisanship being beautiful and wonderful that's completely bankrupt as well, which i would like to talk about right after we take this quick break.

this is the first election in america since the full impact of obama care has been felt. this is the first chance that people have in this country to speak clearly at the ballot box about the impact that this law is having on their lives and on our economy. and this race is a very clear choice between a strong supporter of it and the first attorney general in america who stood up against it. >> that's marco rubio in virginia making the case the virginia election's a referendum on obama care, which i don't think the republicans necessarily want to do.

i'm here with goldie taylor, josh and richard kim. josh made the argument about chris christie and democrats working together, and that's done wonders for christie's image, but democrats i think might regret how close they work with him. >> i think they will regret it. i don't think there's that much difference between chris christie and tea party people like rand paul or ted cruz. he has moved to the right on gun control, abortion, aausterity. he's pretty much a maximalist when it comes to what he's done to unions. the difference is situational, right? he's actually had to govern something as an executive, so i would put him in the category of john kasich of ohio, jan brewer, who have for example expanded medicaid. but on the fundamental question of the size and power of government, i think he's right there with them. >> i also had to point out one thing. he got into a fight with a teacher, he yelled at per. i'll say that again. goldie, go ahead. >> there are a couple things about this. number one, it is, typically 12

months, 18 months out before a presidential election or any election. you have to road test your messages. it is curious that we are far enough out and he's got far enough of a lead over his opponent to be road testing messages right now. >> he's road testing the compromise moderate message -- >> but i've got to tell you, if he runs this message to oklahoma, to alabama, to mississippi, to georgia, that jalopy will not get out of the dealership before it breaks down, because then they're looking, go you know, what are you saying to us? and so, that's the kind of language they're looking for. so, yeah, he's had to govern places, but the grassroots activists across the country who drive the gop today, even driving the gop financially today, driving the tea party and the evangelical wings of the party today, those are the people who will decide that gop primary. so, not only does he have the need to come out to the right on some of these issues, but he moved further to the right on some others. so, we don't know the chris christie that we're going to know in 2016 just yet. >> here's why i think he's actually a very strong candidate

in 2016. what he intends to do out of this election is win big, maybe by 20, 25 points. cuccinelli will have a solid loss in virginia. the narrative is going to be -- >> exactly. >> -- i am the one who knows how to win. and he's been saying this in his speeches. pea says republicans in the other 49 states will be looking to new jersey to see how to win, and he's going to go to these republicans and say you need to change in order to win. the republican pace is very good at resisting that message, but the question, how long can they go on getting beaten up and losing and continue to resist it? the other thing is the establishment candidate always wins the republican primaries for president and they said this about mitt romney about john mccain, he's too moderate to win, he's a rhino. they get beat up in the primaries. but i think chris christie's banking on a strong enough personal appeal and people intuitively trust him. i've found out going around new jersey yesterday and today, the first thing people talk about in the christie rallies is not about his stands on the issues, but that he says something and he'll do it.

that will allow him in the primaries not to pander as much because people at least have an intuitive idea to trust him. >> i think on the optics he's tried to do this moderate and reach across both sides of the aisle. i think when it comes down to the issues, there will be problems he'll face from his base and from moderates. his base will look at his abortion and gun control record, they're going to look at, you know. and then from the moderates, those things are also going to present problems. >> the other thing -- i think you're right about the dynamic. the cuccinelli, what looks like's going to happen with cuccinelli tomorrow really helps him because it's a lesson, how to lose an election. >> it's not important for chris christie. the people christie has his eyes on are rand paul and ted cruz. those are the people he has to contrast winners -- >> but rand paul is coming through -- rand paul and marco rubio are coming through virginia and he will be able to yoke the rest of them to cuccinelli. and this cuccinelli, this is an electoral disaster in the making. >> yeah, yeah.

>> in what should be a winnable state. >> but nobody in the republican base, and gosh, i know them well, nobody in the republican base is going to say, you know, that cuccinelli lost because of our principles. they don't say that. they don't learn that lesson. >> that is so true. you're already seeing -- and he is, he's been massively outspent by terry mcauliffe. every conservative writer i read is saying that's what's going it happen. >> and they won't say it's because of the platform, they're going to say it was cuccinelli. they'll blame the campaign, blame the slickster that is terry mcauliffe. they're not going to blame republican principles or their stance on abortion or their harsh things about women's reproductive rights. they're not going to blame their plank about smaller government. they're not going to blame shutting down the government. they're going to blame cuccinelli. >> cuccinelli has managed to turn abortion, access to birth control and reproductive choice and women's health services into a wedge issue favoring democrats in the state of virginia. >> absolutely. >> it's a pretty remarkable

accomplishment. >> that's an achievement. >> it's like through the culture war looking glass. >> but so much of this is tone. cuccinelli is actually not that much more conservative than bob mcdonnell who solidly won four years ago, but mcdonnell comes off as a business conservative suburban guy, where ken cuccinelli feels like the bible -- >> like a culture warrior. >> and pro-life. >> he has a tone problem, too, though. >> i don't think he does. >> he can be conciliatory, but also jabs his finger in people's faces and calls them names. >> people like that -- >> people in new jersey like that. >> new jersey's a state that spends more than $19,000 per pupil on education, 70% more than the national average, so teachers union is popular -- >> but also does quite well. the thing that was missing today, he wanted to cut a lot more from that budget and a judge stopped him because he found it a violation of the civil rights of poor kids in new jersey. so, he says you're getting as much money as you want. the only reason that wom